RIFTWALKER: THE HEIR TO THE ABYSS

The dojo carried the scent of polished wood, old sweat, and years of disappointment. Kang Jae-Hyun stood at the very back of the training hall. He had been standing there for two years. It was not a place he had chosen. It was simply where everyone expected him to be. The weakest student belonged at the back. That was the silent rule nobody ever spoke aloud. The talented students stood in front, where their movements could be admired. The beginners stood somewhere in the middle, where they could still be corrected. And Jae-Hyun remained in the shadows. He tightened the belt of his worn Gi and ignored the feeling of several eyes on him. He knew those looks. Some were curious and others were amused. Most of them were already convinced. After two years of failure, people stopped seeing someone who was struggling. They only saw someone who could not improve. Every afternoon was the same. He arrived, trained and failed. Then he returned the next day and tried again. The cycle never ended. Across the room, the senior students moved through advanced katas with effortless control. Their bodies flowed naturally, each movement connecting perfectly with the next. He was always watching carefully. He understood every movement, stance, shift of balance and every rotation of the hips they performed. Every detail that separated a beginner from someone experienced. His mind had memorized martial arts but his body was just resisting it. He could close his eyes and picture the exact angle of a front kick. The precise distance between feet in a back stance. The way the shoulder should rotate during a reverse punch. He had spent countless nights studying recordings of grandmasters, freezing frames, tracing the path of each technique with his finger against the screen. He had filled notebooks with observations. Weight distribution percentages. Common errors and their corrections. The difference between a hip rotation of thirty degrees and thirty-five but none of it translated. When the seniors moved, their techniques looked like a single continuous motion, no gaps, no hesitation and no visible thought between one action and the next. Their bodies had absorbed the movements so completely that the line between intention and execution had disappeared. Jae-Hyun had never experienced that. Every technique he attempted required conscious effort. He had to remind himself to breathe. To relax his shoulders. To keep his elbows close. To pivot on the ball of his foot rather than the heel. Each individual component demanded attention, and by the time he had aligned one element, another had already slipped out of place. It was like trying to conduct an orchestra while learning to play each instrument at the same time. The seniors made it look simple. He had stopped believing it was simple a long time ago. "Again." Master Park's voice cut through the hall. The students immediately returned to their positions. Bare feet struck the wooden floor in unison as everyone began the basic forms. Jae-Hyun closed his eyes briefly and imagined the movement. He had done this thousands of times. Left foot forward. Turn the hips. Raise the guard. Drive power from the legs. Simple. At least, it should have been simple. He moved. For a moment, everything was correct. Then his balance shifted and his timing failed. His body reacted slower than his thoughts. He attempted to fix the mistake halfway through the movement. His foot slipped across the polished floor and twisted his shoulder. His momentum carried him sideways crashing the student beside him falling like a heavy sack of sand. The entire dojo went silent. Then laughter erupted. Two years and he still cannot complete a basic stance?. The voice came from the front row. Jae-Hyun did not look up. The student he had knocked over stood immediately and brushed dust from his uniform. He looked annoyed remaining on the floor the second time . His palms pressed against the wood. That familiar feeling returned. He swallowed it and forced himself to stand. The polished floor reflected his face. For a moment, he saw himself as a failure as the way everyone else did. Someone who worked harder than everyone but achieved less than anyone. He lowered his eyes. The laughter faded when heavy footsteps approached. Master Park stopped in front of him, his arms crossed. "Stand properly." Jae-Hyun straightened immediately. "Yes, sir." Master Park studied him. There was no anger in his expression. Only exhaustion. The look of a teacher who had explained the same lesson too many times. The dojo became completely quiet. "Did you practice yesterday?" "Yes, sir." "How long?" Jae-Hyun hesitated. "Until midnight, sir." Several students exchanged glances. Everyone knew how much effort he put in. He arrived before everyone else. He left after everyone else. But Master Park only shook his head. "And this is the result." The words hurt more because they were calm. "Understanding a technique means nothing if you cannot execute it." He turned toward the class. "The human mind can memorize thousands of movements. It can understand every principle behind them." His eyes returned to Jae-Hyun. "But combat is not decided by knowledge." The silence deepened. "It is decided by the connection between the mind and the body." Jae-Hyun remained still. "Your mind understands. Your body does not." Those words felt heavier than any insult from the other students. Master Park continued. "If effort alone created masters, everyone who trained the hardest would become one." He stepped away. "Return to your position." Jae-Hyun bowed. "Yes, sir." He walked back to the end of the line. The whispers followed. "He trains more than anyone." "Maybe he just doesn't have talent." "Some people are not meant for this." He heard every word. The worst part was knowing they were not completely wrong.;He had given everything he had and still, he remained behind. He returned to his stance and watched the other students move. They did not hesitate. Their bodies responded naturally. They did not have to think about every detail. They simply moved. Jae-Hyun wondered what that felt like. To trust yourself. To command your body and know it would obey. To stop fighting against yourself. The class continued. But those thoughts remained. When training finally ended, the students relaxed immediately. The tension of practice disappeared. They laughed, collected their belongings, and discussed their plans for the evening. Jae-Hyun quietly folded his gi and placed it inside his bag. Nobody waited for him nor called his name. They never even looked back. To them, he had become part of the dojo itself. Something familiar and ignored. He pulled his bag closed. The sound of the zipper echoed through the emptying hall. For a moment, he looked around. Two years spent chasing a breakthrough that never came. Still, tomorrow he would return. Because giving up was the one thing he had never learned how to do. He reached the glass door. Then the ground moved. At first, it was only a vibration. A strange tremor beneath his feet. Several students stopped and looked around. Then the entire building shook. The wooden floor groaned as walls trembled. The lights flickered. A violent earthquake ripped through the city. Master Park immediately turned toward the windows. "Move away from the glass!" His voice cut through the panic. The students stumbled away as the shaking intensified. Outside, Seoul descended into chaos. Buildings swayed. Cars stopped in the streets. People ran from structures that suddenly felt unsafe. Then came a sound that did not belong to anything human. It was not like thunder. It was not an explosion. It sounded like reality itself was being torn apart. Every light in the dojo died at once. Glass shattered. Darkness swallowed the room. A wave of freezing air rushed through the broken windows. Jae-Hyun raised his arms as pieces of glass cut through his sleeves and struck his face. But he barely noticed. Because something was outside. Something impossible. A red glow poured through the shattered windows. Slowly, everyone looked upward. The sky above Seoul had split open. A massive crimson c***k stretched across the heavens. It looked like the world itself had been wounded. The clouds around it twisted violently, turning dark purple as the strange tear expanded. Nobody screamed. The sight was too impossible. Fear required understanding and nobody understood what they were seeing. Behind the red fracture was darkness. Not empty darkness. Something alive and watching. Then the force came. A wave of invisible pressure exploded outward from the rift. Windows across the city shattered. Car alarms screamed. The shockwave struck the dojo like a physical wall. Jae-Hyun planted his feet instinctively. For the first time in his life, his body reacted without hesitation. Then another pulse struck. This one hit him directly. A burning sensation erupted inside his chest. He collapsed to his knees. Heat spread through his veins like molten metal. His vision turned red and his muscles locked. He tried to speak. Nothing came out. Then everything disappeared. The dojo vanished. The world vanished. And Jae-Hyun saw something else. A battlefield. An endless field of destruction beneath a dying black sun. Mountains made from the bones of enormous creatures stretched into the distance. A lone warrior stood among the ruins. Surrounded by thousands of monsters. The warrior held a blade covered in golden fire. Every movement was effortless. Every strike was perfect. The warrior turned. And looked directly at him. An ancient voice echoed through his mind. "You are not what you believe you are." Then the vision shattered. Jae-Hyun gasped. The dojo returned. Students lay scattered across the floor. Some were crying. Some had collapsed. Even Master Park stood frozen in fear. But Jae-Hyun felt different. The exhaustion that had followed him for years was gone. His body felt lighter, sharper and stronger. The pain in his back had disappeared. The cuts on his face had already begun healing. He slowly stood. For the first time in his whole life his body moved perfectly. He looked down at his open hands. His skin seemed normal, but his senses told him something had fundamentally changed. The constant ache in his joints, the heaviness in his limbs that he had grown so accustomed to carrying—all of it was simply gone. In the distance, a massive tower groaned and collapsed onto a crowded street. An enormous shadow, vast enough to swallow the sky, began creeping slowly from the bleeding fissure, its form twisting as it pushed through the boundaries of space. Every survival instinct Jae-Hyun possessed screamed at him to run. But his feet carried him forward. Not because he wasn't afraid. Because something inside him was calling him toward the chaos. The air outside was thick with the sharp scents of ozone and pulverized stone. Gray dust billowed up from the spot where the structure had fallen. People stampeded past the dojo doors in blind panic, abandoning their cars in the middle of the street as they fled from the shadows descending from above. Yet despite the obvious danger, Jae-Hyun felt a strange, cold calm settle over his mind. The fear was still there, buried beneath the surface. But above it sat something sharper. Something he had never felt before. At the precise moment his foot landed on the frantic, debris-strewn road, a cold, piercing voice rang inside his head. The tone was utterly mechanical. Crisp. Impossible for his mind to ignore. It cut through the wail of alarms, through the screams of panicked crowds, through the chaos of the collapsing city. "The Path of the Forgotten has chosen you." The voice paused. The entire world seemed to fall silent around those words. Then it returned, delivering one final, icy command that vibrated through the very marrow of his bones. "Rise, or be consumed."